In her recent book, Dangerous Fictions, Lyta Gold writes:
[Philip] Roth has long been stereotyped as one of the “lit bro” white male midcentury novelists; this is largely undeserved, especially as Roth wasn’t perceived in his own context as an unmarked white man, facing both antisemitism from the literary world and censure from the Jewish community for his portrayals of neurotic and often grotesque Jewish characters. But the “lit bro” shoe does slightly fit: Roth wrote white male antiheroes who were often based on himself, with intense sexual obsessions and a usually misogynist view of women. Whether this misogyny is better addressed in some novels than others is subject to debate.
What’s not debatable, however, is that even being able to critically describe Roth’s writing as misogynistic is a new development. I remember the ancient days of the 1990s and 2000s, when offering even the gentlest critique of a famous white male writer was usually met with an accusation of failing to understand his genius. We may live in a state of prosecutorial overcorrection, but I think it’s a dialectical response to the fact that the default position for a certain kind of white male writer and their self-absorbed antiheroes has usually been ferocious, uncritical defense.
We have always been in the courtroom, just on the other side of the aisle; the writer–and the literary critic–have normally worked as defense attorneys. The statement “I think this writing is misogynist” was perceived even before the days of social media as a criminal accusation, a presumption that you were putting the writer and his characters on trial, as well as any of his loving readers as codefendants. It’s a very American sequence of ideas, really: to jump straight from a simple statement of critical opinion to the presumption of trials and witch burnings. . . .
That’s a good point, and it reminds me of science criticism!
It’s always been possible to criticize scientific work–indeed, the back-and-forth of criticism has always been recognized as fundamental to science–but, about 10 or 15 years ago, I and other science critics were getting heavy pushback from some of the researchers whose work we had been criticized. I think part of this is that in the early 2000s, lots of social scientists were getting lots of positive publicity–this was the era of Freakonomics, Gladwell, Ted talks, and tech journalism. (See my paper with Simine Vazire for some background here.)
At the time, some researchers complained that criticism was happening on social media (for example, this blog!) rather than in the peer-reviewed literature, but I think that complaint was bogus, first because they’d taken control over much of the peer-reviewed literature, and second because these researchers seemed to have no problem with positive, often unthinkingly positive, treatment in the media; it was only when the negative comments appeared that they got all uptight about keeping it in the journals.
So I see an analogy between researchers and their fans in the early/mid-2010s complaining about criticism, and authors and their fans in the late 2010s complaining about cancellation. As Gold says, criticism can go too far, but we have to remember that, until relatively recently, there was almost no public criticism at all, and the public criticism that did arise was typically easily deflected.
P.S. Another thing I appreciated about Gold’s book is that she discussed Jonathan Gottschall’s book, “The Story Paradox,” which I liked a lot. One fun thing about nonfiction is you can read one book which points you to another, and another, and another . . . a sort of hyperlinking, if you will.
The term “social media” usually refers to things like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr etc that people commonly use via smartphone apps. Blogs are different story, there isn’t a social graph connecting users, and you can comment without having a blog account yourself. You yourself have written a number of posts on how blogs > twitter, so the distinction is relevant.
Lyta Gold is always worth reading, but I don’t think “new development” is “unarguable.” In the case of Roth, focusing on objectified characters in Portnoy’s Complaint was common in the 70s and 80s. I think the “bro” reputation comes partly from American Sabbath, which was a forceful return to everything he’d been criticized for in earlier books, after a few years focusing on other kinds of stories, and which really, really appeals to a certain kind of male reader. (At that time, all the established male novelists of that age were bemoaning old age and poor health but for some reason “poor health” was something they always depicted as meaning mainly virility. American Sabbath addresses that but somehow also appealed to young men equally.) I was stunned to encounter what Gold describes when I got back online in the late 90s, and seemed to come mostly from recent graduates 10-15 years younger than me, so if she’s the same age that might make sense.
Various social changes in who was getting published and heard were going on around that time, as well. (Increase in importance of MFAs, decrease in the idea that literature is essentially a non-academic pursuit.)
Regarding scientific criticism, and whether or not it has always been possible (and in which form exactly), I was reminded again of a paper a came across at the beginning of this year titled “Scientific Fraud and The Power Structure of Science” by B. Martin (1992).
I found this paper very interesting, and helpful, in light of several problematic issues, and in trying to understand or make sense of certain events. One such event is the fraud case of Stapel, where the investigative report concerning this fraud case mentioned that it took several instances of ringing the alarm bell for any action to follow (Levelt et al., 2012, p. 46). A quote from the paper:
“Science basically operates the same way. There are internal audiences and external audiences. The preferred way to handle shoddy research is to quietly deal with the serious offenders and to ignore the widespread minor cheating. In such a situation, cheaters do not bring science into public disrepute whereas, ironically, those who blow the whistle on cheaters are perceived as posing a threat to business as usual.”
Perhaps a major difference between the “normal” criticism and the kind starting 10-15 years ago mentioned in the blog post here has the do with (something in line with) the above quote. This criticism may have largely not been about whether, let’s say, questionnaire A should have been used instead of questionnaire B, but was making clear that questionnaires in general are invalid or sub-optimal or plain nonsensical to even use. And this was done at a time, and in a way, for many people to see and hear (possibly due to the internet).
In other words, and in line with the quote of Martin (1992), perhaps this criticism starting 10-15 years ago possibly posed “a threat to business as usual” because it criticized fundamental aspects of “the business” and not just some “minor details”. And it did so in a way that many different, and possibly “outside”, people could hear and read it, and become aware of the criticism.
Quote from above: “In other words, and in line with the quote of Martin (1992), perhaps this criticism starting 10-15 years ago possibly posed “a threat to business as usual” because it criticized fundamental aspects of “the business” and not just some “minor details”. And it did so in a way that many different, and possibly “outside”, people could hear and read it, and become aware of the criticism.”
I’ve browsed through the linked to blog post titled “What has happened down here is the winds have changed” and I’ve tried to quickly see whether several events mentioned in that blog post might (roughly) relate to the above quote by Martin (1992), and why there might be a difference between the criticism starting 10-15 years ago and certain prior criticism (e.g. stuff by Meehl in the 60′-70’s mentioned in the “What happened down here (…)” blog post).
I think it’s noteworthy in light of this all that the letter by Fiske mentioned in the blog post explicitly mentions things like “peer critiques” and “science is a community”, which might fit nicely with Martin’s (1992) quote that mentions “internal audiences” and a possible preferred way to “quietly” deal with certain problematic issues. Fiske also writes “In contrast, the self-appointed destructive critic’s role now includes public shaming and blaming (…)” which might also point to this possible preference (at least by some) for internal and quiet handeling of problematic issues. And it possibly points to the possibility and “new” situation that more, and more “outside”, people become aware of the problems.
Next to this, the papers by Bem (2011), Simmons et al. (2011), Francis (2012), several “fatally flawed papers on media-friendly topics”, and the fraud case by Stapel and the investigative report by Levelt et al. (2012) and his (translated) book, mentioned in the blog post might all make clear that fundamental problematic issues are present. Again, possibly thanks to the internet, more, and more “outside”, people become aware of all these major issues.
So in light of the blog post “What has happened down here is the winds have changed”, and the paper by Martin (1992), I would like to note that perhaps “the winds have changed due to a perfect storm”. This might be a great possible title for a possible paper about this should you, or anyone else, want to use (parts of) the blog post to make a paper. If I remember correctly, you stated something about that “What has happened down here (…)” blog post in this light. “The winds may have changed due to a perfect storm”.
The paper by Martin (1992) might possibly be a useful source for such a paper. And if such a paper might arise, I want to note that I think the replication project mentioned in the “What has happened down here (…)” blog post was published in 2015 (and not 2016) and started before that. I think there was an introductory paper about the project in the 2012 special replication issue of Perspectives on (or in?) Pychological Science if I am not mistaken.
This latter special issue is also mentioned in the Levelt et al. (2012) investigative report, and was eye-opening for me as a recently graduated student at the time. In that sense, it may deserve a mention on the time line if it’s not there yet (you refer to Bobby Spellman in one of the comments of the post, which if I remember correctly was the editor for that special issue or something like that).
Maybe it’s because I live in Berkeley, but I recall that period as one when you couldn’t even mention a white, male author without being accused of demeaning all other categories of authors and embracing white, male hegemony.
My critique of all this anti-wokeness nonsense going on stems from a belief that a few edge cases of extreme views have been conflated as representing the majority. I don’t mean to invalidate your lived experience, but you’re here hopefully engaged in dialogue, so I do have to ask, was the view you mention really that dominant? Perhaps within your department and even faculty, it may have been. But if you were talking to students and staff in, say, engineering, or leaving the university and talking to a waiter, an accountant, a dentist…would they really start accusing you of embracing white, male hegemony? Would they even care so much about what authors you liked or didn’t like?
The media likes to hype the extreme, and I don’t think it’s helpful to enter that trap. Otherwise we fall into a cycle of “prosecutorial overcorrections” each one more harsh than the previous because at each turn in the cycle more and more people are told they are the victim in a phony culture war.
I think there is a danger to treating such trend-reversals as merely the swinging of a pendulum. Dialectics are a hypothesis, at best. There is no guarantee to mean-reversion and processes may well turn out to be explosive. When faced with the push-back on science criticism, I would therefore be careful not become too complacent.
Alex:
Good point. I agree.